As a child, I always wanted to decorate a gingerbread house.  So, when I saw a friend’s pictures of her decorating a beautiful gingerbread house in Bangkok with her daughter last year I made a mental note of it and contacted her last month to find out where she and her daughter designed that beautiful house.

Now, you might be asking why I didn’t just bake my own gingerbread and attempt to construct a house that we could decorate at home.  I’ll tell you why. Because me making and constructing a gingerbread house would surely result in an epic Pinterest fail, kind of like this bad boy:  Gingerbread Fail.  So, to save me a lot of heartache (and my children a lot of disappointment), we made reservations this year to take part in a Gingerbread House Workshop at the Sheraton Grande.  It was the perfect holiday activity; not only for Logan, but for his grandmother and for me (and coincidentally, the first time any of us had ever constructed and decorated a gingerbread house).

Upon arrival, there was a place setting for each child with a paper box that contained everything that the child needed to construct and decorate his/her house.  A friendly — and patient — pastry chef then showed the children and parents how to construct the house around the paper box using gingerbread pieces and loads of icing (note:  I think Logan ate more icing than we used to construct the house –which, in both cases, was a HUGE amount).  After the chef helped make sure everyone’s houses were stable, children had free reign to decorate their homes with a multitude (I’m talking A LOT) of different types of cookies, marshmallows, candy canes, chocolates . . . pretty much any and all types of candy you can image.

I would highly recommend this activity to anyone who will be in Bangkok and is looking to do some gingerbread house-decorating next year.  The staff at the Sheraton Grande was fantastic, I was able to choose my date and buy the workshop voucher on the hotel’s website, it was a very child-friendly event (complete with a visit from the hotel’s Christmas elephant), my three-year old loved it, and we brought home a beautifully-decorated gingerbread house.  No disappointments whatsoever and a new and fun experience for all – just how I like it.

And I’ll have you know that the gingerbread houses don’t last that long – we made ours at 1pm today and  the candy was already taking a hit tonight after dinner.  So much fun!

Here is the link to the workshop online:  Sheraton Grande Sukhumvit Gingerbread House Workshop.  I found that the hotel’s FB page and the Bangkok Events Calendar was also helpful when planning our outing this year.